The Show Must Go On, Part One.
New Sentinels Issue 3 The issue begins with the scientist, Dr Wynspeckle, examining Jackhammer's sensors to see what made him perceive the bear hallucinations. In the background, Soldier Ant is trying to deal with the noisy crowd, having announced the 'New Sentinels' are on the task of discovering who stole the missing Symposium exhibits. There are mixed reactions from the crowd. Some are praising the heroes who have saved them, whilst others are blaming Napalm or Zap Boy for burning down the museum and many are booing Jackhammer for his very recently ended rampage. Wynspeckle is perplexed; signals are still being sent to Jackhammer's sensors, which his brain is no longer perceiving (thanks to Flower Girl), but he can't seem to detect a signal being transmitted. Jackhammer insists that there must be a signal that can be followed, despite what Wynspeckle insists, so Napalm suggests asking Jackhammer's contacts at the Pentagon... The comic cuts to the Pentagon, where the heroes are welcome into the computer lab of Dr Reilly Spencer, a portly and largely cheery gentleman. The doctor receives the heroes gladly, though he is a little irritated by Zap Boy, who keeps zapping around near sensitive equipment. Spencer agrees with Wynspeckle's assessment; there is no radio or other electromagnetic signal can be detected. He concludes that the signal is not being sent by a machine; it's being sent by a living being. He and Flower Girl reason that is may be the result of the psychic power. Flower Girl decides to use her telepathic powers to examine Jackhammer, to find the taint of another mind upon his body. She does indeed find the presence of a mind still projecting images to Jackhammer's senses... she sees the image of a very angry looking, heavily scarred... grizzly bear? She also gets the image of a beam of dark energy, intermingled with green, stretching into the sky and a large circus tent. She gets the group to link hands, and channels the love of their comradeship, focusing on the dark taint in Jackhammer's machine body. She visualises the bear, Uber Ursa, and gives the entire team a mental image of his location. This is what they saw... Uber Ursa is not just a bear. Though he cannot speak, there is a small German scientist next to him who seems to translate his growls into English. His fur is missing in several areas due to old lacerations, and there is a slash across on eye, obscured by a monocle. The bear is in a grey mechanical suit with a fish-bowl helmet. There is a swastika on the chest, but it has been slashed by a bear claw. In the vision, the heroes see the bear's translator ranting to his captives. There are several machines connected together into one larger machine. The Animal Attribute Machine (one of several cylinders) is open, spewing the funnel of black and green energy into the sky, through the hole in the Big Top. The AAM is connected to two other cylinders, though one is incredibly low to the ground. The larger cylinder contains blue-black shadowy smoke, and someone pounding against the glass. In the smaller cylinder, there is a bright green glow and someone else ranting and pounding. The green glow is being amplified and funnelled into the AMM by the Ampligon mineral attached to the top of it, and shadow is pouring from the larger cylinder into the AAM. The machines are set in the centre of an otherwise empty circus arena. There are animals stood around them as guardians. All of them seem to have cybernetic harnesses, attachments and/or weapons. The dog and monkey the heroes encountered that kidnapped the Immortal are present. There are two horses with armoured barding with side-mounted lasers and a donkey which pile-driver like attachments upon its hooves. There is a seal with some kind of metallic backpack. A lion with some kind of muzzle and claw attachments. There are two tigers with harnesses with tesla coils attached to the shoulder and lastly, an elephant with a trunk attachment and a back-mounted rocket launcher atop its armour. It is revealed that the captive in the larger cylinder is the WW2 Sentinel, Silent Shadow, who went missing after an attack of Communist Space Bears on the Town Hall in Sentinel City five years ago. The other captive is new villain, The Immortal. Whilst Immortal is ranting about how he is going to beat the bear if he escapes, Silent Shadow is trying to find out what Uber Ursa is up to. Uber Ursa implies that he has suffered create torment from humanity and sees them as a cruel species. His personal experiences in the circus indicated that, and he reveals that the rest of what he learned from humanity did not give him a better image, and showed them to be worse; there is a panel of him absorbing information from a computer screen showing images of Nazi Germany. He explains that he has the power to control and manipulate machinery, and he used to this to absorb information about humanity. Since he captured Silent Shadow through his attack on the town hall with bears that he liberated from the Russians, he has been studying the source of Silent Shadow's power, the Void, a dimension of darkness and entropy. When he discovered about the Science Symposium exhibits, he composed a plan to fuse the Animal Attribute Machine with his own machines. The machine is designed extract genetic data from one being and add it another, so his plan is to alter the machine, and use it to remove humans from this very dimension. Using Shadow to open a rift into the Void, he needed mystical energy to tear open the hole and to keep Shadow alive and then use him to transfer all humanity into the Void. He wanted to steal the energies from the Scroll of Babylon to provide the mystical energies need, but he didn't account for them being contained within a person, so had to enlarge the machine designed to contain the scroll (the smaller cylinder). He then stole the Ampligon to magnify the energies used in the process, to make it global. The vision then ends. The New Sentinels exit the Pentagon and get into Ramming Speed, Jackhammer's rocket-powered, flying jeep. Napalm sits in the back and projects fire behind it to further boost its speed as they travelback to Sentinel City and fly right into the circus big top, landing at the edge of the circus arena. Uber Ursa is confused that Jackhammer is here and not fighting the heroes, revealing that he was transmitting the hallucinations to Jackhammer's sensors as a distraction to keep the heroes off of his back. He shows he knows Jackhammer, though none of the heroes know the villain. Flower Girl tries to convince the villain to back down, as the others join with her, assuring UU that not all humans are cruel and not all of them should be punished by him. The bear derides them for the attempt, assuring them that their species has done enough harm to the planet animal kind that they are clearly a corrupt species. Stopping the heroes from saying further, he urges the animals of the Circus Ex Machina to ATTACK! Napalm targets the two horses and channels fire through the ground to flip them onto their backs. The armour protected them from harm, but as fallen horses, they are out of the fight. Flower Girl uses her powers to bring back the parts of the circus the animals enjoyed, and the music, and puts the two tigers and the dogs to sleep. As the tigers were moving at lightning speed (due to the tesla harnesses sharing electrical energy to boost the tigers). She then surrounds them with protective forcefields to contain them. Zap Boy, under team instruction, telports in, grabs one of the three power sources (The Ampligon), teleports outside the circus and drops it on the grass. Jackhammer grabs the elephant by the trunk and throws it. It lands on the lion, taking it out of the fight. Flower Girl gets lasered by the donkey's hoof attachments. The seal's backpack fires out a bomb through the hole in the bottom of it. The bomb rolls across the seal's tail and is then flicked into the air. The Ampligon causes Zap Boy's powers to OVERLOAD, stopping him from re-entering the tent as electrical energy spews around him. Uber Ursa explains that the machine is already powered up enough, and that removing the Ampligon won't stop the machine. Napalm jets into the air, avoiding the bomb as it explodes. Napalm examines the donkey's hoof attachments, to alter the frequencies on them and sabotage them. Due to kneeling beside an angry donkey, he gets kicked for his troubles and goes flying backward. Flower Girl falls after being shot, but catches herself in a love-field and rises up into the air. Jackhammer dodges a beam of frozen water fired from the elephant's trunk attachment. The seal throws a second bomb, which Jackhammer catches with an extendible arm. The bomb fails to light as it is thrown back, but safely knocks out the seal as it strikes it. Uber Ursa commands the elephant to fire a slew of rockets, which Uber Ursa uses his powers to duplicate. Four rockets become eight, streaking towards to the heroes. Jackhammer uses his multi-wave scanner and technical skills to fly the rockets into each other, whilst Napalm slides along the ground underneath the Uber-Ursa and blasts the bear with fire. Flower Girl lands on the bear's back and pins him down with her field, taking out the monkey that had scampered onto his back after shooting Flower Girl. Ubers Ursa seems undeterred, reminding them that they have only encountered the animals of the Circus Ex Machina. The issues ends with The machine still powering up, as the interpreter for Uber Ursa shows that he has extendible robot arms, as circus performers start pouring into the ten to do battle, and some of the mightiest animals are still left to deal with.